Field
The present disclosure relates generally to communication systems and processes and more particularly, to communications systems and processes for fast dormancy to reduce tail overhead of radio connections that contain a small amount of data.
Background
In mobile telephone devices, radio connections that contain a relatively small amount of data (referred to herein as “tiny connections”) occur in certain communication networks. Tiny connections can result in an inefficient usage of power in mobile user equipment (UE) and inefficient usage of network resources. Tiny connections can be caused by various events, for example, but not limited to, delayed TCP FIN packets, keep-alive messages, delayed/duplicated RST or ACK packets, and unwanted spurious packets initiated by networks, or other communication events.
Since tiny connections contain a very small amount of data (e.g., a relatively small number of packets, or one or more relatively small packets), the useful period of time for exchanging packets between the UE and the network is very small, followed by a relatively large period of time referred to as “tail overhead.” Tail overhead is caused by the network inactivity timer. The network inactivity timer is configured to expire at a predefined time period following the end of each packet, unless another packet is communicated within that time period. During tail overhead, the UE stays on a high power state (e.g., CELL_DCH and CELL_FACH) while waiting for the network inactivity timer to expire, so that the UE can transition to a low power state (e.g., IDLE).
For example, a tiny connection with two seconds of traffic activity and eighteen seconds of network inactivity timer would suffer 90% tail overhead. Reliably shortening tail overhead can improve power usage efficiency in the UE and improve network efficiency by releasing radio resources earlier.
One proposal for shortening tail overhead is to identify a specific tiny connection type such as one for a delayed TCP SYN packet where the very first packet in a radio connection is a TCP SYN packet from the server which is followed by an uplink ACK packet. However, that proposal would be limited to only those tiny connections that are provided with such SYN and ACK packets.
Other proposals, such as described in U.S. Publ. No. 2012/0320811 to Islam et al. or in U.S. Publ. No. 2013/0242763 to Li, involve determining data transaction needs of an application running on a device, to determine if future network communications are likely. According to such proposals, a device can send a signal to release a radio connection when it determines that the application running on the device is finished with data transactions. However, such proposals do not address various different types of “tiny connections” that can occur in many network environments.
Other proposals, such as described in U.S. Pat. No. 8,504,002 to Lenart et al. have employed algorithms for transitioning a device to a different operating state, after an amount of time has lapsed in the absence of data traffic, but are not concerned with “tiny connections” in the first preset number N of packets of a communication session